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Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes with the chilling, but not really surprising, news that the U.S. government is aware that many names in its terrorist suspect database are not linked to terrorism in any way. From the article: Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government's widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept. Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government's Terrorist Screening Database — a watchlist of "known or suspected terrorists" that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments — more than 40 percent are described by the government as having "no recognized terrorist group affiliation." That category — 280,000 people — dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

More likely is a huge backlog and incompetence (remember you are dealing with a bureaucracy). So someone enters a name poof on the list (guilty with no trial, acted suspicious, etc). Then the 'trial' happens. The trial part is harder as you have to go thru the persons information ALL of it. You want to be sure as they ended up on the list somehow and you dont want to be the guy who pops one off the list and it turns out they did something. So the input rate is greater than the output rat

According to Greenwald, there are bigger stories to come from the Snowden leaks.

Since the beginning, my big question has been who are they actually targeting to spy on? I know they're recording everybody's calls, but whose calls are they stopping to listen to? Names.

Last month they revealed the five muslim Americans (mostly lawyers) who they were spying on. It's easy to say, "yeah, but brown people." And I think that's exactly the goal. Let people say "well, it was just muslims and they're kinda all terreri

I don't know if it's the "Terrorist Watch List" but my name somehow got on a list. I remember when I was getting my ticket at the check in stand, the agent took my ID and walked off. For 30 minutes I was standing there with no answers. When they came back, they said my name was similar to a name on a watchlist and in the future, I needed to make sure to add my middle initial to any tickets I purchased. I spaced on that the next ticket I bought and sure enough, the same 30 minute process. Since then I've alw

Having a terrorist tie only means that your second cousin is friends with a person who has a roommate suspected of being a Hama sympathiser.

Not having a tie, and being on the list, means this person might possible like a build a bomb and blow up some civilians. I am more leaning to the ones with ties are more likely to not belong on the list than the ones without.

Because: What if one of those 40% decides to become a terrorist and is allowed on a plane or isn't tracked closely thanks to being removed from the list? Can you prove that none of those 40% will ever become a terrorist in the future? No? Then they need to remain on the list just in case they one day get terrorist leanings.

Seriously, though. These agencies, sadly, seem to think in these terms. Any reduction in surveillance or removal from a terrorist watch list - even if the people being removed have n

And there's no incentive to remove anyone from any list ever. All it costs in hard drive space, and that's cheap. If it wastes time because of extra scrutiny for people at the airport or traffic stops that just means we need more TSA agents and more police, which just means the police state apparatus needs to be bigger, so it fuels itself.

It does. The list arbitrarily denies the right to free travel and movement among the various states for no reason whatsoever, almost 300,000 people in total. It draws into question the accuracy of the "60%"--that is, if nearly 300,000 people are arbitrarily on the list for no discernible link to terrorism, how many of the "60%" that they claim have ties to terrorism, actually do?

The incompetence of the 40% casts doubt on the claim of "60%" accuracy. I.e. "Of the 60% who do allegedly have terrorist ties, aga

I don't think it's necessarily an error rate. What they're saying is these people may be lone actors (Unibomber, Boston bombers) who are not linked to any actual terrorist organization. Or, they're people who they think may become radicalized but have not actually phoned up Al Qaeda yet.

It's still a ridiculous number, but one can be a terrorist without being linked to a terrorist group. Yet.

I don't think it's necessarily an error rate. What they're saying is these people may be lone actors (Unibomber, Boston bombers) who are not linked to any actual terrorist organization. Or, they're people who they think may become radicalized but have not actually phoned up Al Qaeda yet.

It's still a ridiculous number, but one can be a terrorist without being linked to a terrorist group. Yet.

You're not incorrect in your logic--one can be a terrorist without having yet been linked to a terrorist group. But it begs the question of how they were identified as terrorists and put on watch lists in the first place. Is it because they look funny? Smell funny? Have a funny hair-do? Wear traditional "muslim" clothing when they travel? Have the wrong political beliefs? Have the right political beliefs but don't express them ardently enough for big brother's taste?

That category -- 280,000 people -- dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

And this is deeper in the article:

The groups with the largest number of targeted people on the main terrorism watchlist -- aside from "no recognized terrorist group affiliation" -- are al Qaeda in Iraq (73,189), the Taliban (62,794), and al Qaeda (50,446). Those are followed by Hamas (21,913) and Hezbollah (21,199).

So, there are 50K more people who are known to NOT have terrorist ties than all of those combined, and several times more than any single category.

Basically the list is useless, because they have more known non-terror linked subjects than they have people with actual links to terrorism.

I'm betting that list is anti-war protesters, people who disagree with the government, or who have done any number of innocent things which you have a right to do.

They didn't say that. They said that the 40% "dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined". That means that the second list is only a small portion of the remaining 60%. It also means that most of the 60% aren't suspected of having ties to the three groups - and therefore also are probably false positives. Note that they said "suspected", most of the 60% aren't even suspected of having ties to the big three.

I do not think it is supposed to be particularly easy to join hamas, particularly for an American. You do not just look up "Terrorist" in the yellow pages and call 1-800-alQ-aeda.

The ability to join a known terrorist organization is limited to a few people based on genes, friendships, and geography.
The ability to hate the government and to build bombs is universal.
Ergo, most terrorists will most likely not have any affiliation is known terrorist organizations.

Realistically, how many people share the same name as a terrorist? I had a friend by the name of Chris Johnson who had been flagged. If one Chris Johnson is a bad guy...all the rest are not, and I bet that's a lot of Johnsons. What made it funny was that he had a top secret clearance but still got flagged at airports.

Practically every other moslem in the Middle East, I would guess, and a few more.Some names from Islam's history, such as Mohammed or Ibrahim are very common, as first, last and middle names.For instance, I know two people named Ibrahim Mohammed, both having being born in Europe, descendants of immigrants and not the least bit religious.

It is the same withPeter, T(h)omas, Fred(dy)(deric), Frank(ciscus), Marry(an) etc. p.p.Nearly every christian name... erm name used by christs, has an associated saint and a name patron.Lucklily I have a more high name, simlly Angelo:) and my name fits to all book religions, except that the hebrews call me 'Malak' and the in arabic it is oh... 'Malak', too.

Let's face it.... a group of 20 people could do major damage to the U.S. If I had cells of 5 people in a few states.... I could cause wide spread chaos and fear. If they were watching 100 people, I'd think the list was excellent. If they were watching 500 people, I'd think the list was almost prudent. That they are watching 680,000 people? That list is USELESS. Needle in a haystack useless.

If there ARE plots to hurt Americans, we need much better, much TIGHTER scrutiny of specific individuals... A Terrorist Watch List, to be effective, should have the top 50 suspects, and their closest associates. 500 people at the most.

That list didn't catch the Boston Bomber..... even though Russia TOLD US he might be a problem. Needle in a haystack.... Forget the 40%. The sheer number of people on that list makes it useless. Lets face it, there are probably a few hundred people out of 300 million that really need watching.

I honestly doubt there are more than a handfull of people inside the US that have: actual terrorist desires, actual terrorist connections, an actual plan to hurt people, and enough fanaticism to overcome the fear of Gitmo or Death. There might be more with one or two of these, but look around you... if we're in so much danger, where's the actual DANGER? Since Sept. 11th, we've had ONE guy, the boston bomber... ok, and a bunch of right wing soverign citizen types.

Actually, I'm much more afraid of a crazy american trying to topple the government (all by himself, of course) than an actual terrorist.

Well, that crazy American would be a defacto terrorist in such cases, but *shrugs*. I'm more concerned with people that are legitimately crazy becase they may not be on any list and just randomly snap on go on rampages. The best way to mitigate the 'random crazies' is to encourage mental health checks much akin to health checks and to take the dangerous toys out of their hands. But lets be frank, in America neither of those things will happen.

Exactly the entire effort is wrong headed. If someone wants to cause a calamity they can.

Consider the west. You don't even need cells of 5 people, if you just had 20 people that all agreed they were going to drive out some highway in 20 different areas out west and start a wild fire all on the same day it could easily be enough to exhaust fire fighting resources. All of the could accomplish that with no training and supplies they could acquire at any gas station on the way to job without raising any susp

A successful terrorist doesn't necessarily need to join a club. Look at the villains our vast comic-book history: they're almost all scarier when they act alone and not as part of some terror franchise.

I hate to say it, and I know this will go against the common feeling here, but I think TFS misses the point. Misses by some distance, actually.Timothy McVeigh wasn't, to my knowledge, associated with any recognized terrorists organizations. That doesn't mean he shouldn't have been on a list of people the FBI is concerned about. Whether or not they are known to be a member of a known terrorist group isn't the important question. (Note also the difference between "we don't know which group they are affiliated with" vs "we know they aren't communicating with any group"). If someone is acting like a terrorist, such as buying explosives on the black market, the government should probably make a note of that fact, regardless of what groups they are associated with or not associated with.

The information in the report that is more concerning to me is that they have added 430,000 names to the "terrorist-related" database in the last four years. That sounds like far too many people. I was surprised the report said they REMOVED 50,000 names in those same four years. That's good news. I'm also concerned about the EFFECTS of being in this database. If there were that many people on the no-fly list, that would be troubling, but I don't think that's the case. If a listed person flies to the middle east and back and that triggers a notification to authorities so they can include that information in their larger understanding of what's going on, that's less troubling.

We should be asking "how is this list used?" and "what ARE the criteria to be put on this list?"Those, I think, are more important questions than "how many act alone or in small groups, as opposed to recognized organizations?"

I know, that sounds like defining "is" or "sex with that woman" but...

TFA indicates that they have no "recognized terrorist group affiliation ties". So does that parse to(1) American citizens who have no ties to a terrorist group(2) no known ties to a terrorist group, but the NSA could have metadata that shows contact with one or multiple known members of those groups,(3) ties to groups which we suspect may have terrorist motives/wings/connections but are not currently recognized as terrorist groups(4) ties to or current or prior foreign citizenship from state which sponsor or harbor terror groups

Option (1) is what the article would suggest. Here's a similarly ambiguous statement, which is 100% truthful: "Of the 280,000 people on the list who have no recognized terrorist group affiliation ties, none are identified in the article as being Americans citizens." Of course, the infographic indicates that, of the 660,000 people on the watchlist, 3300 are American citizens (0.5%), but not that any of those 3300 are in the unaffiliated group. Which is why I suggest items (3) and (4), which (I'm guessing) make up the vast majority of those in the 40%.

TFA says 40% have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” So the Unabomber would fall into this category, as would someone who had expressed a desire to set of a bomb, or someone who says "as a member of the blah blah group I am committed to terrorism" (if there is no recognised blah blah group).

Somewhere somehow someone slowly turned travel to be a privilege, which the Executive can withdraw at a whim. It ought to be explicitly declared a right, which only the Judiciary can suspend — after a trial.

A terrorist can have an affiliation with a group, or act independently.

So, a person can be in three states:A: not a terrorist,B: a terrorist without group affiliationC: a terrorist with an affiliation.

The list contains 60% of the people in group C. 40% are either A or B. All of the ones that are B still fit the criteria for the watch list, so those are valid. There isn't enough info to tell us if the distribution is 60% C, 40% B, and 0% A (which would be

My wife is probably on that list. She ordered two small pressure cookers via Amazon recently one for her and one for our daughter. But it was TWO. Automated add to terror list.

You should see that this is a good thing overall. The quicker this list can be proven worthless in the eyes of everyone, the faster it will become a heated target within politics, ripe for attack. It's own absurdity will remove it's power to abuse.

I somehow doubt that. In my experience absurdity is no obstacle for a policy; especially one driven by fear. As flawed at it is, if we get rid of the list terrorists will start downing planes left and right. You wouldn't want that, would you? Would you?!

They've already more or less admitted that they have absolutely no control with these lists, and that any agency, for any reason, without any actual evidence can add someone to the watch lists.

Let's think this through for a minute... So you would rather that the list be made up of persons with known terrorism group allegiances, and that any and all supporting information also be cataloged in the same place so that the list is audit-ready to outline exactly who is a terrorist, why, and how we know that? Yeah fucking right. The list itself would be a roadmap for how the US finds and tracks terrorists. You're just going to have to unwad your panties on this one, you don't get to decide who the defense department targets since you are completely unqualified to do so and frankly, don't know shit about mitigating the risk of terrorism.

Apparently, the people in charge are also completely unqualified. By your logic, we should simply sit back until they've fingered everyone as a potential terrorist. Then there won't be anyone left to complain.

They've already more or less admitted that they have absolutely no control with these lists, and that any agency, for any reason, without any actual evidence can add someone to the watch lists.

Let's think this through for a minute... So you would rather that the list be made up of persons with known terrorism group allegiances, and that any and all supporting information also be cataloged in the same place so that the list is audit-ready to outline exactly who is a terrorist, why, and how we know that? Yeah fucking right. The list itself would be a roadmap for how the US finds and tracks terrorists. You're just going to have to unwad your panties on this one, you don't get to decide who the defense department targets since you are completely unqualified to do so and frankly, don't know shit about mitigating the risk of terrorism.

We don't need a list at all. We didn't need one before 9/11/2001 and we don't need one now. The CIA and whomever else were tracking the hijackers before they attacked. They just failed to stop them for whatever reason. Two of them were living with an FBI informant for crying out loud. We didn't need a list to know they were with Al Qaeda and where they lived in the country.

We don't need a list. And no speech about how we need Col. Jessup up on that wall will convince me otherwise.

It means 60% on that list are suspected of having terrorist ties. It does not mean they really do have terrorist ties, and it does not mean the suspicion is reasonable. In other words, that 60% would need to be further categorised before it becomes a meaningful statistic.

Meaningful enough for one to conclude that if the real numbers were out there, they'd be doing about as well as random chance (hey, they have a 50/50 chance of being right), and quite probably are doing FAR worse.

If they're admitting that 40% don't have any ties, you can probably assume that the number of people who don't belong on the list is much higher.

This is what happens when you have secret lists, and no evidentiary threshold to apply to put people on it.

Overall, I'm going to conclude these agencies are at least 40% incompetent.

> Meaningful enough for one to conclude that if the real numbers were out there, they'd be doing about as well as random chance (hey, they have a 50/50 chance of being right), and quite probably are doing FAR worse.

Lots of medical tests are worthwhile with a lot more than 50% false positives. The problem with this 40% statistic is that it falls well short of traditional thought that it's better to let 10 guilty go free than convict 1 innocent. If this were just a list that got you watched it would be one

A cheap medical test that flags 50% falsely for an illness (and sends them to the more expensive test to be cleared) but almost NEVER clears someone who is actually sick is much better than one that is as likely to clear you as flag you if you ARE sick.

This terrorist list? We have no idea how many terrorists slip through the net, though given the lack of daily bombings it's probably very very very few - simply because there are very very very few t

Where ties means that your credit card showed up when they ran a check of who bought stuff from a particular ebay merchant in the month of May 2003, and one of the other cards that came up in that same search was a stolen card that might have been used by terrorists to buy unknown stuff without being detected.

After the Boston Marathon Bombing, the tea party were the first people blamed. The shooter of the judge and congresswomen in Arizona was also blamed on conservatives (even though it turned out the guy was a liberal.)

The media used the term "anti-gov" types, patriots, and extreme right wingers. I didn't see any reference to neo-nazis. The media have gone out of it's way to link those terms with the tea party and you damn well that was the implication.

In any case, it turned out the right-wing "extremest" had nothing to do with the attack.

Also, show me the evidence of all the right wing nutjobs bombings and shootings and I can show you that the progressiv

Let's see who gets a FOIA request for their entry criteria and see what it takes to get into this DB. I've read of at least 2 stories (Army and FBI) where government sensitivity training is already classifying some conservatives or Christians as "extremist", somehow forgetting about the people with the black flag that have a stated goal of terminating all of us.

“It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

—Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna

"...the Muslim’s real enemies, not only Israel but also the United States. Waging jihad against both of these infidels is a commandment of Allah that cannot be disregarded.”

Most of us (on/. anyway) realized right after 2001 that the "We're trying to catch terrorists!" excuse would be used to steamroll over the rights and protections of pretty much EVERYONE. The T E R R O R I S T boogeyman has become a goddamned golden license to do anything for the CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, etc.--all the way down to the local yokel sheriff who uses his new toys and tools to spy on his wife.

It was never about terrorism. It was about exploiting terrorism to create the police state they always wanted.

There's no need to even postulate that they want to create a police state; it's simply the cheapest, easiest way to appear to be responding decisively to a threat. When it's cheaper and easier to ignore freedoms than protect them on the path to security, and security is the topic of the moment, what vote-hunting politician of any stripe is going to give a damn?

One more level down--that politician was elected by a population that is overwhelmingly white, elderly, doesn't travel much, gets their news from television, and has elevated children to the level of sacred cows.

According to NSA's current spying policy, it's pretty clear that they see that world has two kinds of people in it. Those who have been found to be terrorists, and those who haven't been found to be terrorists yet.

One of the most revolutionary aspects of Western sense of justice has been presumption of innocence. Throughout the history, presumption of guilt was far more common in justice systems everywhere. That's why the most common way to question suspects was torture.

This is simply the security and justice apparatus degrading into it's more natural state due to lack of stringent oversight.

I would have expected that well over 90% of people on the terror list have nothing to do with terrorism. So, this number is actually quite low, and if true, means that (1) the government is successful in identifying terrorists, and (2) there are really LOTS of terrorists on the planet, which is really worrying.

I strongly suspect that 40% are confirmed false positives. Then there is a large group that they don't know yet, but who are just innocent and mostly harmless.

Example:
Jeff is a Terrorist.
Jeff has a brother named Bill.
Bill has a wife named Jessica, a child named Mary, friends named Sarah, Mitchell, and Parker, a boss named Paul, goes to a bank on 53rd st. who employs 31 people, he goes to a grocery store on 17th ave. who employs 44 people,...

This could very well be controlled spin to ensure that the numbers are propped up to make it look like they are mostly accurate based on the undefined term "links / associations", which could be as loose or as specific as you want it to be.

One would hope that that would mean providing aid in some way rather than "I know him", or "I know someone who knows him", or worse, "I've once spoken to him" or "I've once spoken to someone whose spoken to him" but we frankly don't know.

Simply a devils advocate answer on my part. May very well be that the remaining parties on the list are there for good reason and the 40% here are purely accidental inclusions. I'd personally suspect that there's an ex-girlfriend or two that made the list somehow, someway to otherwise make life hard following a bad breakup.

If they are on the list for a good reason, why are they not in jail, or dropped from the list, by now? It's been ten years, and the government has watched their every step. Surely they would have done something illegal by now.

(The government has watched their every step, right? I mean, these people are so dangerous that we can't let them fly. Surely, they can't be just let loose unsupervised in 2D-society.)

That's the strange thing about the No Fly list. If the people are dangerous and they find out they can't fly (which could really only be because they were on the No Fly list) then wouldn't that make them more likely to do something. Hell, it's the sort of thing that is going to anger someone who wasn't dangerous and had no inclinations to hurt anyone. Sure, they likely still won't hurt anyone but suddenly protesting and fighting against the power of the government doesn't seem that outrageous when the govt

So 40% of the people on the list either have nothing to do with terrorism, or are independent terrorists, or are sufficiently sneaky that they don't know what group they belong to but not sneaky enough not to attract attention.

And 60% of the people are suspected of having ties to terrorist groups.

So anywhere between 0% and 100% of the people in either category could be terrorists.

this could be fun go through the phone book a give anonymous tips of random people for common innocuous things that the govenment considerer possible warning signs and see how big we can inflate the list until no one is allowed to fly in the US.

Why is this so surprising? This is the watch list. Kindof like a tornado watch. A tornado has not been spotted yet but the conditions areright. They have strong ties and/or other reasons to be suspected. If they were a known terrorist then they should be arrested so almostby definition the watch list and even the "cannot fly" list should be primarily suspected terrorists not actual terrorists.A list like this is probably natural in any investigation but just like any suspect list it's what you do with

"they have No Terrorist Ties", doesn't mean they shouldn't be monitored, If I say "I want to blow up the white house", as far as I know, I have never met a member of a terrorist organization, its not like they go around with a badge saying terrorist, I have no terrorist ties but I have acted in a way that may make me a suspect. On the other hand just because my ex-partners boyfriend's cousin, is a suspected terrorist doesn't me I am likely to be one, even though I have "ties" whatever that means.

Sad thing is, this is less 'abuse of power' and more 'laziness'. A high false positive rate is an indication that they are not really bothering to confirm people or clean up the list over time, they are just throwing stuff in a bin and moving on.

I'm pretty sure they watch slashdot. I posted about how 2nd amendments nutters are full of shit [slashdot.org] because they act like it's their wet dream to stop government tyranny with their guns, but haven't done a damn thing once it was revealed the government completely ignores the 4th amendment. Three days later some AC posts this stupid fishing attempt [slashdot.org] looking for other people to attack the NSA with him. Right. That's a completely legitimate inquiry AC. Did they teach you that one in narc school?